Ascendant

by Diana Peterfreund

  Slowly, the presence of more unicorns invaded my senses. I looked up. Blotchy and Jumps stood a few trees away, watching.

  Okay, boys, which of you is it going to be?

  But they couldn’t understand me, and if they could, I doubt they’d be waiting there, drooling over meat I intended to use to lure one of them to his death.

  I rose to my feet and began walking back toward the electric boundary, dropping lumps of meat as I went. My plan was to bring the unlucky unicorn as close as possible to the edge of the enclosure before inserting the needle into its vein. I knew how to give injections, but I would need to distract the unicorn long enough to perform the procedure. Even with my magic-enhanced speed, it might be tricky to keep the animal still once I stuck a needle through its thick hide. Unicorns were pretty quick, too.

  I cast a glance behind me. Both unicorns followed, snarling at each other as they rushed from one bread crumb of meat to the next. I felt other unicorns emerging around us, drawn in by the scent of food. I grimaced. Great, an audience.

  Jumps realized that if he let Blotchy claim the rearmost sausage and ran straight to the next one, by dint of his longer legs, he could jump the line and get most of the food I dropped. He started gaining on me.

  Whoever wins loses.

  Jumps drew closer and closer. I waited for him near the boundary and when he reached me, I palmed the syringe in one hand and held out a huge lump of meat in the other.

  “Here boy,” I whispered, tamping down my fear and projecting nothing but comfort on the slim chance that he could feel some of the turmoil in my mind. He leaned in to take the meat from my hand and I closed my fingers around it—hoping he wouldn’t choose to overcome that barrier by just biting them off—and slipped my other hand around his neck. He tensed up for a moment, but remained intent on the meat.

  As Jumps pulled the last bit of sausage from between my clenched fingers, I slid my pinky through his mane, searching for a vein in his neck. I had to do this quickly. Even now, Blotchy was catching up to us, nose still buried in the leaves, looking for any forgotten meat.

  There. The needle slid in and I tightened my grip on the unicorn as I depressed the plunger.

  The einhorn jolted once, and I held on, using the force of his jerks to draw us closer to the line. The unicorn gasped.

  Respiratory failure followed by cardiac arrest.

  I knew what was happening now. Jumps stumbled to his knees and I followed, holding on with both hands.

  “Shhh …” I whispered as he twitched then went still. His terror faded like an echo inside my head.

  I took a deep breath and straightened. There. Done.

  At the edge of the woods, a line of unicorns gathered and watched me, their fathomless eyes filled with reproach.

  “I had to,” I said to them, and began to drag the body across the line. As I pulled Jumps over the boundary, a shock jolted through us both and I dropped his hooves and fell back onto the ground.

  “Ow!”

  The other unicorns didn’t move, just watched me with interest.

  Okay, next time, I’d need to think this through. Rubber gloves, maybe, or simply release the collar before I pull the corpse over the—

  Jumps’s chest began to rise and fall.

  No. That was my imagination. Or maybe some sort of leftover muscle spasm.

  He lifted his head, then struggled to push himself to his feet.

  “Oh my God,” I whispered, still splayed out on the ground.

  Jumps took a few staggering steps, horrific choking noises coming from his mouth. His eyes were wide now, rolling in his head so I could see the red sinews that held his eyeballs in place.

  But his mind—oh, his mind! Inside his head was nothing at all. No fear, no pain, no thoughts, just a vast black chasm. “No!” I cried, reeling in horror.

  He fixed me with his bloody stare and, gasping, collapsed once more.

  As one, the unicorns at the edge of the woods turned from their fallen friend to me.

  What had just happened? The unicorn was dead; I could have sworn to it. I saw it die; I felt our link break. Had it been the electric shock, somehow reanimating its heart and nerves?

  And yet, the way it had glared at me… .

  Breathing hard, I crawled toward the body and placed my hands on his neck, searching for a pulse. Nothing. My fingers in front of his nostrils found no breath. And, most of all, the chasm had closed.

  My shoulders shuddered and I bowed my head.

  Jumps’s hoof shot out and kicked me in the stomach. I flew backward and my head slammed hard against the earth. I wheezed and covered my belly with my hands, squeezing my eyes shut in pain.

  Just a nerve response. That’s all.

  And then I heard the worst sound of all, a unicorn scream. It seared through my ears, shrill and desolate, then straight into my brain, where it echoed from a place beyond memory, into instinct no cell in my body could ignore. Make it stop.

  I rolled to my feet, clutching my aching stomach with one hand and reaching for my knife with the other.

  I staggered toward the body of Jumps, which was flailing and grunting, trying to push itself to its feet. It was dying. Again.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, and slit the unicorn’s throat. Blood poured from the wound to soak the leaves around our feet, and the unicorn fixed me once more with its gaze, as black and deep as the void fading from both our minds.

  Jumps went limp and I kneeled near his head, burying my face in my bloody hands.

  Sometime later, I heard a motor and looked up to see some of the Gordian staffers pulling up outside the fences with a small truck. They stared through the links in horror, speaking to one another in French.

  I rose, letting my hair hang in front of my face so they couldn’t see the streaks of blood, so I didn’t have to look at them. My eyes burned like alicorn venom, but no tears fell. The men came through the outer ring of fences, and the surviving unicorns sprinted back into the woods.

  I waited, head bowed over the corpse, until I realized the angry string of French emanating from the one in the white coat was aimed at me.

  “Salope Américaine! “ He grabbed my arm, and the unicorns were close enough so that when I shook him off, I knocked him from his feet.

  His jaw was slack with shock as he looked up from his spot in the dirt, but I didn’t change my expression, just stared at him grimly from beneath my fall of hair, like the blood-spattered girl at the end of a horror film.

  He grunted, stood, and started speaking to his companion.

  “Mademoiselle, pardon.”

  I turned my baleful glare to the assistant.

  “He says the specimen is ruined. The blood, it was important to keep inside. That is why you were instructed to use the syringe.”

  “I used the syringe,” I snapped. “It didn’t work.”

  As the assistant translated, the scientist snorted and flicked a blood-soaked leaf off his leg.

  “It didn’t!” I exclaimed in French, turning on him. “He went down, but he kept coming back to life.”

  The scientist rolled his eyes.

  “They have amazing healing powers. You know this,” I argued straight at the head scientist. I knew enough French to manage that. “And also, the famous purification ability. Don’t you see? I gave him the poison.” My French failed here. “He was neutralizing it.”

  The scientist laughed. This time he didn’t go through his assistant but spoke to me in English. “I do not listen to an ignorant child. You know nothing of medicine. Just magic.”

  The blow hit harder than the unicorn’s hoof. I gulped, seeking some sort of response, as the scientist continued his conversation with his assistant.

  The younger man translated, “We will need a new specimen.”

  I shook my head. “Not without shooting or stabbing. I can’t get one otherwise.”

  “We will provide you with another syringe.”

  I switched back to French. “No. It doesn’t work!
”

  The scientist practically growled at me. “You will do as you are told.”

  Oh, I would, would I? Not in these woods. I gave a nearly imperceptible shake of my head as unicorns coursed through my veins, wild and free even in this pitiful, dying little forest. I said nothing. I didn’t need to.

  The scientist and I stared each other down while the assistant wrung his hands. Finally, the scientist cursed and walked off, and the assistant began to lug the corpse toward the gate.

  “Hang on,” I said. “I’ll help you.” I leaned over, grabbed my alicorn knife from the puddle of einhorn blood, and wiped it off on the dying grass.

  I was so fired.

  After depositing the dead einhorn on the flatbed of the cart, I watched the assistant drive away, then limped back up to the château. The scientist had already gone inside, no doubt to tattle to Isabeau about what an intractable bitch I was. Salope.

  Whatever. At least back at the Cloisters we only killed unicorns that were an immediate threat to ourselves or others.

  With difficulty, I made it up the stairs to my room, my abdominal muscles screaming in pain with every step. Now that I was out of range of the einhorns, my superstrength had fled, and I could feel the full power of that kick. I’d be lucky if there was no internal bleeding.

  It was the middle of the night back in New York, but I needed to talk to Giovanni right now. I felt hollow and faint, reeling with rage and pain and other feelings I was too scared to attempt to identify. I might wake him up, but he’d done it to me before, too, calling during his evenings, way after bedtime here in the quiet French countryside.

  But Giovanni wasn’t in bed. Instead of his sleepy voice at the other end of the line, I heard pounding techno music. “Astrid!” Giovanni attempted to yell into the phone.

  “Are you at a club?” I asked him. That was unlike him. Last summer, Giovanni had preferred museums to nightclubs and gelato to alcohol of any kind. Had he fallen off the wagon?

  I did the math. It had to be after three A.M. where he was.

  “Astrid!” he shouted over the beat. “Now’s not the best time!”

  “I’m hurt,” I sobbed into the phone. “I got kicked by a unicorn today.” And that wasn’t even the worst part.

  “I can’t hear you!” he cried. “Can I call you back in the morning?”

  I flicked the phone closed and squeezed my eyes shut. Who knew where I’d be by then?

  In my posh golden bathroom, I stripped and assessed the damage. A dark bruise was already spreading across my entire torso. Maybe I was hemorrhaging. Maybe when Isabeau came in to fire me, I could ask her to call the hospital. In the meantime, I could enjoy this place while I still had it.

  I washed off the blood and put on a loose-fitting dress that wouldn’t rub against my waistline, then called Lauren and canceled our lessons for the day. Obviously, if I lost my job I’d no longer enjoy the educational patronage that Gordian was providing. And anyway, I needed to lie down for a while.

  I eased myself onto my bed, tugging gently at the hem of the bluish gray silk so my dress wouldn’t bunch up beneath me. I rested a hand on my stomach and my head on the lavender-scented feather pillow, and I let my eyes drift close.

  I don’t know how long it was before there was a soft tap on the door.

  “Come in,” I rasped without moving. Here it comes. I heard Isabeau’s voice, tried to sit up, then cried out as my bruised abdominal muscles activated.

  “You’re hurt.” She rushed over to the bed. “What happened?”

  “Got kicked by the einhorn …”

  “Let me see.” I moved my hand and she pulled up the front of my dress. I winced as she softly palpated my stomach. “You need a cold compress for this. And some painkillers. And I will have a doctor come to look at it.”

  “The same doctor I saw this morning?” I asked, suspicious.

  Isabeau straightened. “That man is no longer in my employ.”

  “What?” I shoved myself up on my elbows. “Why?”

  She looked into my eyes. “Astrid, I am going to tell you something and you must listen very carefully. You are never to let a man lay a hand on you in anger. Do you understand?”

  I bit my lip.

  “Yes, I made sure I got a full report.”

  I talked past the lump in my throat. “But it was my fault. I messed up; I ruined the unicorn—”

  “Even if you had,” Isabeau said, her face hard as stone, “it would still not be a reason for him to touch you. Nothing would warrant that. But you did not mess up. You tried to follow our directions. There were complications that none of us could have foreseen, and you were faced with a loose unicorn, outside the boundary. It could have endangered everyone in the château, and you protected us. You did your job, Astrid.”

  I gulped, but it was like there was a balloon in my chest, growing bigger and bigger with each of her words. “But what about your research?”

  She shrugged. “We face a setback. Obviously we can’t risk losing more of the unicorns until we have perfected the euthanasia technique. So that experiment will be put on hold.”

  “It worked,” I said. “At first. But then it’s like it came back to life. I was wondering if it had something to do with their rejuvenation ability. Like maybe the blood was neutralizing the poison, even after his heart and lungs had stopped, and … I don’t know, allowed it to start again… .” I trailed off, remembering what the scientist had said about my ignorance.

  “It’s possible,” Isabeau agreed. “In fact, it is very likely that you are correct. We’ll have to keep working on the problem. But you must not blame yourself for what happened this morning. We gave you faulty equipment. It was our mistake, and it will not happen again.” She smoothed the edge of my dress. “We cannot risk the danger. You’re too valuable to us.”

  I burst into tears, rolling onto my side as carefully as possible and curling my body into a tiny spiral.

  “Astrid.” The bed dipped, and I felt Isabeau’s hand on my arm, the soft fall of her hair on my brow. “Ne pleure pas, ma petite. Ma petite chère.”

  I turned over and wrapped my arms around her waist, laying my head in her lap.

  “Shhhhh,” she said, stroking my hair. “Don’t cry.”

  But I wanted to cry. I wanted to cry and cry for poor Jumps, and for all the pain in my stomach, and for the fact that Isabeau believed me, that she stood by me, and that she thought I was more important than research that could turn her into a billionaire or even save the world.

  After a few moments, the tears passed, but I didn’t move, and Isabeau didn’t stop caressing my hair.

  “I suppose you shouldn’t go to your lessons today,” she said.

  “I’ve already canceled them.” I sniffled.

  “Is that so? Well. I will go get you a cold compress, tea, and perhaps some soup? Would you like me to bring you some books? Or maybe a magazine? I have some English ones. I think you should try to rest until we see the extent of the bruising.”

  I agreed and Isabeau left, returning in short order with an ice pack, some herbal ointment, and a tea made of ginger and stinging nettles. I’d changed into loose pjs and climbed under the covers.

  “You’ll like this,” she said, handing me the mug. I’d quickly learned that when she said that, it usually meant I would most emphatically hate it. Stinging nettles tasted about like you’d imagine—like dirt and leaves brewed in hot water—with the added kick of spice from the ginger.

  “Honey?” I choked.

  Isabeau laughed. “Drink quickly. It’ll help with the bruises. How is the compress?”

  I patted it. “Cold. Feels nice.”

  “You just rest. Here, I brought you something special.” She laid a large book on my lap.

  “Hildegard of Bingen: Selected Writings,” I read. “What happened to British Vogue?”

  “You’ll like this better, Astrid. It’s about a medieval nun—”

  “A hunter? “ I scowled.

 
“No, a scientist. And a composer and a writer. Hildegard of Bingen was one of the smartest women that ever lived, as a matter of fact. She wrote several books on diagnostics and medicine, including one that talks about unicorns. She ran her own monastery and served as an adviser to popes and kings.”

  “She had skull-cracking visions and spoke in tongues,” I read from the back of the book.

  Isabeau smiled. “Well, we don’t have a problem with magic around here. Especially magical nuns.”

  “I’m not a nun,” I said.

  There was another knock at the door and Brandt stuck his head in. His arms were filled with a video game console and controllers. “I heard we have an invalid?”

  I tossed Hildegard aside as he entered, dragging a little cart with a TV perched on top.

  “I’ve only got about ten games.” He handed me a controller and a stack of disks. “But I want to see if the unicorns have helped you get any better with first-person shooter.”

  “The good news is,” I said, “I couldn’t get much worse.” Back home, Brandt used to tease me that I could play only the nonviolent games—the ones where I had to stack blocks or roll things into balls or race cars. But of course, that was before I’d killed anything. Times had changed.

  Brandt plugged in the television, hooked up the console, then slipped in a disk. He hopped up beside me, jostling both the tea and the cold compress on my tummy. He fluffed a spare pillow behind his back and handed me a controller. “Okay, hunter. Care to wager?”

  I pulled myself into a more upright position and arranged my pillows and compress. “Sure. Five euros?”

  “That’s all you’ve got? Isabeau, are you ripping off this poor girl? She’s the one taking her life in her hands.”

  Isabeau folded her arms. “No, you’re certainly not a nun Astrid.”

  “Fine,” I said. “Ten.”

  As Isabeau made her way to the door, Brandt clicked through to the start menu. “I say we take on some zombies first.”

  That worked for me, too. After all, I’d already killed one today.